Economics of Technology – Page 46

“In a Garage Pursuing a Dream”

(p. 257) The increase in computer-animated films . . . marked the dawning of a democratic moment in artistic expression and entrepreneurship. Just as technological developments in digital production were (p. 258) opening the door more widely in live-action filmmaking, technology was making computer animation more accessible every year.
Computer animation was still an art form that required talent and intense Commitment; it wasn’t within reach of Everyman. The accessibility of its tools, however, brought new possibilities. Where Pixar’s early years had required a succession of wealthy patrons–Alexander Schure, George Lucas, and Steve Jobs–an enterprising artist of the early twenty-first century was not so dependent. The hardware and software of an animator’s workstation, once the province of major studios and effects houses, could now be had for the cost of a good used car. As Pixar started its new life as a crown jewel of the Walt Disney Co., it was plausible that it would sooner or later have to jockey release dates with a new kind of rival. Or, rather, it would have to face a rival that looked much the way Pixar itself did thirty years earlier, as a group of men and women in a garage pursuing a dream.

Source:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: my strong impression is that the pagination is the same for the 2008 hardback and the 2009 paperback editions, except for part of the epilogue, which is revised and expanded in the paperback. I believe the passage above has the same page number in both editions.)

Intellectual Property Rights as Refined in Case Law

The questions and answers in court illustrate how case law would approach the issue of refining and reforming intellectual property issues based on concepts of justice, but also on practical issues. (This is from Disney and Pixar lawyer Steve Marenberg questioning Dick Cook in testimony before Judge Clarence Brimmer, Jr. on November 1, 2001, the day before Monsters, Inc. was scheduled to be released.)

(p. 193) Q : So obviously the delay of the film by injunction or otherwise would affect the first weekend and the ability to gain all of the benefits you’ve gotten by virtue of the tact that November second is the first weekend?

A : It would be a disaster.
Q : And that would affect, then, not only the theatrical performance of the film, but what other markets in the United Sates?
A : Well, it would completely be a snowball effect in a reverse way in that it would certainly put a damper on all of the home video activities, all the DVD activities; in fact, would influence international because international is greatly influenced on how well it does in the United States, and by taking that away, it would definitely, definitely, have a big, big impact on the success of the film.
And furthermore, going further, is that it would take away any of the other ancillary things that happen, you (p. 194) know, whether it would become a television series, whether or not it becomes a piece of an attraction at the parks, whether it becomes a land at the parks, or any of those kinds of things.

Source:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
(Note: my strong impression is that the pagination is the same for the 2008 hardback and the 2009 paperback editions, except for part of the epilogue, which is revised and expanded in the paperback. I believe the passage above has the same page number in both editions.)
(Note: on p. 190 of the book, Price misspells Marenberg’s name as “Marenburg.”)

“Dematerialization” Means More Goods from Fewer Resources

(p. C4) Economic growth is a form of deflation. If the cost of, say, computing power goes down, then the users of computing power acquire more of it for less–and thus attain a higher standard of living. One thing that makes such deflation possible is dematerialization, the reduction in the quantity of stuff needed to produce a product. An iPhone, for example, weighs 1/100th and costs 1/10th as much as an Osborne Executive computer did in 1982, but it has 150 times the processing speed and 100,000 times the memory.
Dematerialization is occurring with all sorts of products. Banking has shrunk to a handful of electrons moving on a cellphone, as have maps, encyclopedias, cameras, books, card games, music, records and letters–none of which now need to occupy physical space of their own. And it’s happening to food, too. In recent decades, wheat straw has shrunk as grain production has grown, because breeders have persuaded the plant to devote more of its energy to making the thing that we value most. Future dematerialization includes the possibility of synthetic meat–produced in a lab without brains, legs or guts.
Dematerialization is one of the reasons that Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler give for the future’s being “better than you think” in their new book, “Abundance.”

For the full commentary, see:
MATT RIDLEY. “MIND & MATTER; The Future Is So Bright, it’s Dematerializing.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., February 25, 2012): C4.

The book mentioned by Ridley is:
Diamandis, Peter H., and Steven Kotler. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. New York: Free Press, 2012.

Benefits of Driverless Cars Justify Changing Liability Laws

“The car is driven by a computer that steers, starts and stops itself. A 360 degrees laser scanner on top of the car, a GPS system and other sensors monitor the surrounding traffic.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p A13) Expect innovations that change the nature of driving more than anything since the end of the hand-crank engine–so long as the legal and regulatory systems don’t strangle new digital technologies before they can roll off the assembly line.
. . .
Mr. Ford outlined a future of what the auto industry calls “semiautonomous driving technology,” meaning increasingly self-driving cars. Over the next few years, cars will automatically be able to maintain safe distances, using networks of sensors, V-to-V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communications and real-time tracking of driving conditions fed into each car’s navigation system.
This will limit the human error that accounts for 90% of accidents. Radar-based cruise control will stop cars from hitting each other, with cars by 2025 driving themselves in tight formations Mr. Ford describes as “platoons,” cutting congestion as the space between cars is reduced safely.
. . .
Over the next decade, cars could finally become true automobiles. Our laws will have to be updated for a new relationship between people and cars, but the benefits will be significant: fewer traffic accidents and fewer gridlocked roads–and, perhaps best of all, young people will be in self-driving cars, not teenager-driven cars.

For the full commentary, see:
L. GORDON CROVITZ. “INFORMATION AGE; The Car of the Future Will Drive You; A truly auto-mobile is coming if liability laws don’t stop it.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., March 5, 2012): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Quantum Computers May Revolutionize Nanotechnology and Drug Design

“Scott Aaronson.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. D5) When people hear that I work on quantum computing — one of the most radical proposals for the future of computation — their first question is usually, “So when can I expect a working quantum computer on my desk?” Often they bring up breathless news reports about commercial quantum computers right around the corner. After I explain the strained relationship between those reports and reality, they ask: “Then when? In 10 years? Twenty?”

Unfortunately, this is sort of like asking Charles Babbage, who drew up the first blueprints for a general-purpose computer in the 1830s, whether his contraption would be hitting store shelves by the 1840s or the 1850s. Could Babbage have foreseen the specific technologies — the vacuum tube and transistor — that would make his vision a reality more than a century later? Today’s quantum computing researchers are in a similar bind. They have a compelling blueprint for a new type of computer, one that could, in seconds, solve certain problems that would probably take eons for today’s fastest supercomputers. But some of the required construction materials don’t yet exist.
. . .
While code-breaking understandably grabs the headlines, it’s the more humdrum application of quantum computers — simulating quantum physics and chemistry — that has the potential to revolutionize fields from nanotechnology to drug design.
. . .
Like fusion power, practical quantum computers are a tantalizing possibility that the 21st century may or may not bring — depending on the jagged course not only of science and technology, but of politics and economics.

For the full commentary, see:
SCOTT AARONSON. “ESSAY; Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines.” The New York Times (Tues., December 6, 2011): D5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary is dated December 5, 2011.)

Internet Companies Respect the Value of Your Time

“Arvind Jain, a Google engineer, pointed out the loading speed of individual elements of a website on a test application used to check efficiency, at Google offices in Mountain View, Calif.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Wait a second.

No, that’s too long.
Remember when you were willing to wait a few seconds for a computer to respond to a click on a Web site or a tap on a keyboard? These days, even 400 milliseconds — literally the blink of an eye — is too long, as Google engineers have discovered. That barely perceptible delay causes people to search less.
“Subconsciously, you don’t like to wait,” said Arvind Jain, a Google engineer who is the company’s resident speed maestro. “Every millisecond matters.”
Google and other tech companies are on a new quest for speed, challenging the likes of Mr. Jain to make fast go faster. The reason is that data-hungry smartphones and tablets are creating frustrating digital traffic jams, as people download maps, video clips of sports highlights, news updates or recommendations for nearby restaurants. The competition to be the quickest is fierce.
People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second).
“Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” said Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft.
. . .
(p. A3) The need for speed itself seems to be accelerating. In the early 1960s, the two professors at Dartmouth College who invented the BASIC programming language, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, set up a network in which many students could tap into a single, large computer from keyboard terminals.
“We found,” they observed, “that any response time that averages more than 10 seconds destroys the illusion of having one’s own computer.”
In 2009, a study by Forrester Research found that online shoppers expected pages to load in two seconds or fewer — and at three seconds, a large share abandon the site. Only three years earlier a similar Forrester study found the average expectations for page load times were four seconds or fewer.
The two-second rule is still often cited as a standard for Web commerce sites. Yet experts in human-computer interaction say that rule is outdated. “The old two-second guideline has long been surpassed on the racetrack of Web expectations,” said Eric Horvitz, a scientist at Microsoft’s research labs.

For the full story, see:
STEVE LOHR. “For Impatient Web Users, an Eye Blink Is Just Too Long to Wait.” The New York Times (Thurs., March 1, 2012): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated February 29, 2012.)

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

The Impact of Cheap Smart Phones on Africa

Jimbo Wales

Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 2) PHONING: A friend of mine bought me an Ideos phone on the street in Kenya for about $80. This is an Android phone that’s a bit smaller than an iPhone, but a lot cheaper. This is really exciting because at that price point, hundreds of thousands and soon millions of smartphones are going to be sold across Africa. The impact for people’s access to knowledge in some very difficult places is enormous.

For the full interview, see:
Jimmy Wales as interviewed by KATE MURPHY. “DOWNLOAD; Jimmy Wales.” The New York Times, SundayReview (Sun., February 12, 2012): 2.
(Note: the online version of the interview is dated February 11, 2012.)

Paul Allen Uses Microsoft Profits for Bold Private Space Project

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen indicated he is prepared to commit $200 million or more of his wealth to build the world’s largest airplane as a mobile platform for launching satellites at low cost, which he believes could transform the space industry.

Announced Tuesday, the novel, high-risk project conceived by renowned aerospace designer Burt Rutan seeks to combine engines, landing gears and other parts removed from old Boeing 747 jets with a newly created composite craft from Mr. Rutan and a powerful rocket to be built by a company run by Internet billionaire and commercial-space pioneer Elon Musk.
Dubbed Stratolaunch and funded by one of Mr. Allen’s closely held entities, the venture seeks to meld decades-old airplane technology with cutting-edge booster-rocket designs in an unprecedented way to assemble a hybrid that would offer the first totally privately funded space transportation system.

For the full story, see:
ANDY PASZTOR And DIONNE SEARCEY. “Paul Allen, Supersizing Space Flight; Billionaire’s Novel Vision Has Wingspan Wider Than a Football Field, Weighs 1.2 Million Pounds.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., December 5, 2011): B1 & B5.

“What Success Had Brought Him, . . . , Was Freedom”

(p. 5) The success of Pixar’s films had brought him something exceedingly rare in Hollywood: not the house with the obligatory pool in the backyard and the Oscar statuettes on the fireplace mantel, or the country estate, or the vintage Jaguar roadster–although he had all of those things, too. It wasn’t that he could afford to indulge his affinity for model railroads by acquiring a full-size 1901 steam locomotive, with plans to run it on the future site of his twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion in Sonoma Valley wine country. (Even Walt Dìsney’s backyard train had been a mere one-eighth-scale replica.)
None of these was the truly important fruit of Lasseter’s achievements. What success had brought him, most meaningfully, was freedom. Having created a new genre of film with his colleagues at Pixar, he had been able to make the films he wanted to make, and he was coming back to Disney on his own terms.

Source:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
(Note: ellipsis in title was added.)
(Note: my strong impression is that the pagination is the same for the 2008 hardback and the 2009 paperback editions, except for part of the epilogue, which is revised and expanded in the paperback. I believe the passage above has the same page number in both editions.)

Pixar as a Case Study on Innovative Entrepreneurship

Source of book image: http://murraylibrary.org/2011/09/the-pixar-touch-the-making-of-a-company/

Toy Story and Finding Nemo are among my all-time-favorite animated movies. How Pixar developed the technology and the story-telling sense, to make these movies is an enjoyable and edifying read.
Along the way, I learned something about entrepreneurship, creative destruction, and the economics of technology. In the next couple of months I occasionally will quote passages that are memorable examples of broader points or that raise thought-provoking questions about how innovation happens.

Book discussed:
Price, David A. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.